We discussed the idea of “Warm Modern” architecture in our last blog post and how well-suited it is to Tennessee’s climate and national cultural trends. In this post, we’ll look more closely at modern design. We’ll discuss architecture’s underlying poetry and language and how a disciplined approach to design and intentional decision-making creates an architecture unique to you and the place you call home.
Intention and Free Luxury
Intention is at the heart of design, from creating iPhones to creating homes. Intentional decision-making is magnified to an extreme in modern home design.
Adding intention to anything automatically produces luxury, which is paradoxically free or at least reasonably priced in many instances. Take the iPhone for example. Every element of the iPhone was carefully considered during development, including functionality, design, and even adaptability to meet the demands of all users. To avoid giving away too much about my age, I recall a time when games were played on a console that was connected to the TV, phones were phones, and cameras were cameras. All of this and more as you know, is available on the iPhone. Many of us today cannot live without the product, which was a luxury when it first came out. The design of custom homes is very similar.Let’s get specific.
Picture this: As you walk through a well-designed space something is different. You are not sure why. The space’s functionality is exceptional. The living room is sized just right, the kitchen has great access to the grill. You begin to see alignments between the island and the fireplace. You see the direction of the wood floor and how the same pattern is repeated above on the ceiling and directs your eye toward the view. The lights are aligned with the furniture. The shape of exterior elements is repeated at a smaller scale inside the home in various locations. You can see how the building frames the view. All of these elements are intentional.
These aren’t coincidences. In architecture, fundamental choices can be practical, adaptable, and even poetic. In many cases, achieving this intention requires thoughtful alignment, material selection, or planning to meet a specific function—often without adding any cost. For instance, aligning the same lights you’ve already paid for doesn’t cost extra, nor does orienting the wood grain and pattern to highlight a view. It simply comes down to clear communication and intentional decision-making.
Poetry of Concepts: Warm Modern
With infinite possibilities, deciding on the overall design direction can be daunting. Starting with a blank canvas is challenging—where do you begin, and which path leads to the best layout? Much like financial investing, the goal is to allocate your resources where they’ll have the greatest impact. The question isn’t whether to create a home that reflects you, but rather how to make decisions that are going to move the needle and create a special place for you and your family. What exterior finish materials should you choose? How should the layout flow? What will the home look like? These are the key decisions that shape your unique home.
Pro Tip: Don’t think style, think experience, and find inspiration from a diversity of imagery. No one has one style they like, everyone likes a lot of different things.
Home design, particularly “Warm Modern” design when executed well, is guided by a clear underlying concept that informs every decision—from material choices to beam placement, from the home’s layout to the arrangement of furniture. This approach creates a cohesive and intentional experience. Great architecture is rooted in a central idea that leads both the architects and the clients toward the right decisions, not just any decision. Warm Modern concepts are deeply inspired by the site and the homeowners themselves, reflecting their unique story and environment. Let’s explore a recent example—a home design fresh from our studio, and the homeowners themselves.
The Hearth Home
A passage from Analysing Architecture sets the scene perfectly for this project, paraphrased below.
Imagine a prehistoric couple walking through a forest. They stop at the edge of a meadow and decide, “This is a good spot.” Clearing a space for a fire, they gather stones from the area to define its edge. In this simple act, they create a primitive form of warm, modern, organic architecture. Though rudimentary, it is modern for its time—rooted in the materials and methods available to them. It is warm because it draws directly from the natural environment. Around this fire, they find physical warmth and prepare food. But once their basic needs are met, something deeper emerges. The fire becomes a gathering place—a space for sharing ideas, telling stories, and building connections. This fire is where language is born, where humanity begins. This is the pre-historic hearth, this is home.
Fast forward a few thousand years and the camp has evolved into a building. Instead of tents encircling a fire, we now have rooms arranged around a fireplace. This fireplace has become the hearth—the heart of the home. Like the ancient campfire, the hearth provides warmth, a space to prepare meals, and a gathering place for family and friends. It is where connections are forged, stories are shared, and plans—whether for alliances or endeavors—are crafted.
The fireplace remains a timeless symbol of home—a beacon of warmth and connection. In today’s homes, the hearth has evolved into the kitchen island. Think about it. The kitchen island is a hub for meal preparation and a place where everyone naturally comes together.
For a family, it might be where everyone gathers on a Sunday morning, sipping coffee or juice while sharing plans for the day. Kids might spread out their homework while parents prepare dinner, creating a moment of connection amid the busyness of life. It’s also where birthday candles are blown out, and someone might lean on the counter for a heart-to-heart after a long day.
For a group of roommates, the kitchen island becomes a hub of camaraderie. After a night out, they might congregate around it, recounting stories from the evening while snacking on leftovers or heating up frozen pizza. It’s where they laugh over inside jokes, share updates on their lives, or brainstorm plans for their next adventure. The island becomes more than just a functional surface—it’s a stage for the stories and bonds that make a house feel like home.
The Hearth Home embraces this shift, making the modern hearth the heart of its design while honoring its traditional roots.
Now that we have the main idea of Hearth Home we can begin making decisions. Like always let’s start broad and work towards specific.
Exterior Layout and Form
The Hearth Home like in our story sits at the edge of a forest and a meadow. The layout is based on creating privacy from neighbors (meadow side) by placing more solid parts of the home (bedrooms and bathrooms) between the neighbors and the living space. The living space, with its large windows, is more transparent and less private, however, the forest it overlooks naturally creates privacy. These spaces are arranged around the hearth (the island), much like tents around the fire.
The diagram below shows the progression of the idea. From the campfire, we create a fireplace. A fireplace is needed to allow smoke to escape in a covered area while acting as a staple of focus and warmth. The tents are replaced with pods, a Modern approach to defining space. Like the tents, each pod has a function. One pod is dedicated to the primary bedroom. Another is dedicated to the secondary bedrooms. The final pod is for the living/dining/kitchen. These are positioned to create privacy on one edge while opening up the view to the woods on the other. The negative space between the pods works similarly to the spaces between the tents, creating separate entries for guests (front door) and the owners (side door from the detached garage). This arrangement allows for greater functionality internally.
Internal Layout and Space Function
Now that we have the exterior layout and site-to-building relationships identified, it is time to look internally at the arrangement and how it influences the internal functions. The external and internal layouts must be balanced to achieve a common theme between the function and the site. As discussed above, the hearth of today is now the island. This island is the centerpiece of the home. The hearth and the living space should occupy the most important position in the plan. Aligning the kitchen island with indoor and outdoor fireplaces—the hearths of yesterday—creates a harmonious axis that allows us to create poetic alignments with indoor and outdoor spaces. It also creates better functionality. For example, the entries (or space between the pods, like the tents) allow us to split the plan. This offers the owners privacy from guests. On the guest side sits the foyer, the guest bath, the guest bedroom, and the office space. On the owner’s side, you will find the master suite, mudroom, and laundry for everyday living. The pantry and kitchen also connect with the owner’s entry, allowing grocery drop-off from the garage. Both guests and owners are intertwined at the kitchen island and living space. The diagram below illustrates how this works.
Materials of Warm Modern
Similar to the decisions about the layout and form, the decisions focusing on materials are born from the concept. The big idea. We supported that idea with thoughtful and specific decisions; like charred cedar on the exterior. The cedar tree is native and well-known in Tennessee, especially near the project site. Using the native wood connects architecture to location while the charring symbolizes the connection to the ancient fire, the “hearth of yesterday.” This charring of the wood also has pragmatic benefits. The charring process makes the wood more bug resistant and fire resistant. Plus it requires less maintenance. This serves as a benefit for aging in place and offers longevity in the design.
A stone base could also make similar connections to the campfire. Where the rocks around the fire created an edge, in this design, the stones define the edge of the home. The edge where nature converts to the man-made is much like our pre-historic ancestors defining their campfires. Like so many things in architecture, warm modern instills intention in areas otherwise impossible without an overall narrative to guide the decisions. It illustrates an old standard of living in a new way. This connection between person and landscape is the poetry of architecture. For the clients, it’s a new home in Tennessee.
The Hearth Home is now in our portfolio! Want to learn more about how CW is warming up modern architecture? Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date and follow us on our socials.